It is no longer ecologically acceptable to cut and mulch leaves and grass and truck them off to landfills. For the past decade municipalities have encouraged their residents to mow their lawn's frequently and allow the clippings to fall back onto the lawn and decompose naturally. This process, known as mulching, ceases to be effective if the lawn grows too long between successive mows. The effectiveness of mulching is also reduced in the fall when the leaves fall upon the lawn.
Nevertheless, it remains desirable to mulch vegetation to a fine texture and to uniformly spread the mulched vegetation back upon the lawn. By finely grinding the vegetation so as to form a mulch and uniformly spreading the mulch upon the resilient blades of grass, the likelihood of smothering the lawn is greatly reduced. Moreover, the uniformly cut and distributed mulch then functions as a natural organic fertilizer as it decomposes thus reducing the need for chemical fertilizers.
A number of different devices have been disclosed for mulching grass. Some of the devices merely plug the discharge chute and trap the chopped vegetation in the mower housing until it falls back upon the ground. The distribution of the mulch is uneven and often results in clumps of material scattered over the lawn.
Other devices post process the cut leaves and grass as they exit the discharge of the cutting deck or the hopper of a trailer.
Some devices utilize exotic blade designs which deflect the flow of material up and down in hopes of achieving uniformity.
None of these approaches provide the same degree of control in a simple, compact machine.
To that end, the present invention is directed to a mobile implement for reducing vegetation to dispersible size. More particularly, it is directed to a mulching mower which mulches vegetation and uniformly distributes mulch back onto the lawn.